“After all, she was falsifying an official document. That’s not a small offense.” Mum tilted her chin. “We told her our family belonged to a satanic cult with a pathological belief in horoscopes. We said a child born on the seventh of October would be subject to severe reprisals and we’d have to give her up to the cult for use in satanic rituals. She believed us. And as she had a soft heart, and what you might call a prejudice against Satanists, she entered the wrong birth date on the certificate.” “Satanic rituals! What impertinence!” The man by the mantelpiece hissed the words like a snake,
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